Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Ever since Mr. Holden made me do a project on Aus­tralia in grade five I’ve fig­ured that sooner or later I’d snorkel with dol­phins in the land down under. Call it a child­hood dream if you will. I had for­got­ten all about it until I came across this med­ical study which states that swim­ming with dol­phins helps depres­sion. I’m going to assume that while this activ­ity may not have the same effect on non-depressed peo­ple, I can still clas­sify this infor­ma­tion as one more rea­son to go trav­el­ling real soon.

… they found the par­tic­i­pants who swam with dol­phins had recov­ered from their depres­sion sig­nif­i­cantly more than the con­trol group. Seventy-seven per­cent of the dol­phin group no longer met the thresh­old for depres­sion on the Hamil­ton scale com­pared with 25 per cent in the con­trol group.

The researchers said “The echolo­ca­tion sys­tem, the aes­thetic value, and the emo­tions raised by the inter­ac­tion with dol­phins may explain the mam­mals’ heal­ing properties”.

The find­ings sup­port the con­cept of bio­philia — the idea that “human health and well­be­ing are strictly depen­dent on our rela­tion­ships with the nat­ural environment”.

Mind Hacks: Swim­ming with dol­phins helps depression